Teaching overview
Learning points
- NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope will soon retire after 16 years in service. The telescope’s sensors detect infrared radiation—a kind of light we can’t see with our eyes.
- A pizza-making robot has been unveiled. It can add toppings to 300 pizzas every hour, but a human is still needed to put the them into the oven!
- Thanks to their diet of seaweed, sheep on the island of North Ronaldsay release less methane than other sheep. Now, scientists are looking for ways to feed seaweed to other farm animals.
Curriculum keywords
- Space
- Robotics
- Climate change
Video viewing guide
This graphic organizer supports your students to capture their thoughts and questions as they watch the news update.
Spark a discussion
Spitzer Space Telescope
- What is infrared radiation?
- Why is it helpful that the Spitzer Space Telescope can detect infrared radiation?
- Scientists use data collected by lots of different telescopes—some on Earth, some in space—to study the universe. Why is this better than using data from just one telescope?
Pizza-Making Robot
- Why might a restaurant want to add a pizza-making robot to its team?
- Can you think of any disadvantages of replacing people with robots—for example, in restaurants, on farms, or in factories?
- Imagine you could design a robot to help you with a daily task. Which task would you choose, and how would your robot help you?
Seaweed-Eating Sheep
- What’s so unusual about the sheep of North Ronaldsay?
- How could feeding seaweed to other farm animals help to reduce their environmental impact?
- Did you know that seaweeds aren’t actually plants? In what ways are they similar to, and different from, plants?
Classroom resources
Use these resources to get the most out of the news update and engage your class in topical science!
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Video viewing guide
This graphic organizer supports your students to capture their thoughts and questions as they watch the news update.
Make your own science news update
This simple guide helps your students to create their very own science news updates.
ELA activities
This guide gives you ideas for how the news update can be used to support ELA activities.
Discover more about the topics covered in this week's News update
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